EDITOR'S PICK: NEW YEAR'S EVE TE DEUM IN
LISBON

By Culturekiosque Staff

LISBON, 18 DECEMBER 2012  The tradition of singing
the Te Deum on December 31 as an action of thanksgiving for the
year gone by gave rise to one of the most impressive ceremonies of
liturgical music in eighteenth century Lisbon. After last years surprise
success of the first ever historical reconstitution of one of these
ceremonies, the Gulbenkian Orchestra and Choir return to the Church of
Saint Roch, this time with a Te Deum by António Leal
Moreira, composed in 1786. The Portuguese state television network
RTP will once more transmit this concert live, thus associating
itself to the renaissance of this grandiose tradition.

The Portuguese composer António Leal Moreira (1758 - 1819) was a
contemporary of Mozart. He had his early musical training at the
Patriarchal Seminary in Lisbon, later serving there as assistant to his
teacher, Carvalho, and as organist. In 1787 he became mestre de capela of
the Portuguese royal chapel, followed by appointments as music director at
the Teatro da Rua dos Condes and in 1793 at the newly opened Teatro de S.
Carlos.

The main body of Moreira's work was operas, oratorios, serenades, and
sacred music. He set both Italian and Portguese libretti in works
influenced by composers such as Paisiello and Cimarosa. He left to
posterity very little instrumental music. The brief, standalone Sinfonia
is a rare exception that anticipates the overture styles of Rossini and
Donizetti.

Igreja de São Roque (Church of Saint
Roch)

Built according to the plans of the Italian architect Filippo Terzi in
the second half of the 16th century, the Igreja de São Roque (Church
of Saint Roch) was one of the few buildings in Lisbon to survive the
1755 Lisbon Earthquake. As one of the world's first Jesuit churches,
it served as the Society of Jesus home church in Portugal for over 200
years, before the Jesuits were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula nation.